At Work in the Fields of the Lord
Legal Services E-lert
Bibliographic Info:
Author: Paul Demko
Source: New Times Broward-Palm Beach
Date: 12/30/1999
Florida’s Migrant Farmworkers Justice Project has filed two suits on behalf of farmworkers. The first case, on behalf of 24 Haitian migrant workers, alleges that Thomas Brothers Farms systematically and illegally fired the legal migrant workers from their jobs so that the farm could bring in Mexican workers at a lower wage through the H-2A guestworker program. The second case, a class-action suit that could include as many as one thousand Central Americans who have worked in Thomas Brothers’ packing houses over the last four years, alleges that because Thomas Brothers charged them $3 per day for round trip transportation to and from the packing house, their wages were below the federal minimum wage. In addition, the workers claim they were not properly paid for overtime work and social security taxes were deducted from their paychecks but never paid to the government. Paul Demko, At Work in the Fields of the Lord, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Dec. 30, 1999.